Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1992 • 38 minutes
Through music, poetry and quiet, at times, chilling self-disclosure, five positive black gay men speak of their individual confrontation with AIDS, illuminating the difficult journey black men throughout America have made in coping with the personal and social devastation of the epidemic. From panic, resignation, and silence to the discovery of the redemptive, healing power in being vocal and visible as HIV-positive black gay men, each tells a singular and at the same time familiar story of self-transformation—a story in which a once shameful, unmentionable “affliction” is forged into a tool of personal and communal empowerment in Marlon T. Riggs’ seminal 1992 film.
Up Next in Prismatic Ground
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Towards Mathilde
Directed by Claire Denis • Documentary • With Mathilde Monnier • 2004 • 84 minutes
Emphasizing raw physicality, craft, and in-the-moment fervor over exposition, Towards Mathilde, from filmmaker Claire Denis (Beau Travail, 35 Shots of Rum, Let the Sunshine In), is a documentary portrait par excel...
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A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness
Directed by Ben Rivers & Ben Russell • Drama • With Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe • 2014 • 98 minutes
A SPELL follows an unnamed character through three seemingly disparate moments in his life. With little explanation, we join him in the midst of a 15-person collective on a small Estonian island; ...
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The Society of the Spectacle (French ...
Directed by Guy Debord • Documentary • 1973 • 91 minutes
Six years after the publication of his Situationist classic The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord released this semi-experimental, essay-film adaptation. Using the classic Situationist technique of “détournement” (think pre-digital remi...
